Why we love where we live

I just wanted to point out a couple of things that I was able to photograph in Norwalk that I don't know if we will ever have again in our neighborhood.

While we were at the park the other day, another little boy came to play with his Grandmother. After a few minutes of watching Alyssa show interest in her new playmate, I noticed their mode of transportation. The Grandmother called it "the Tractor."

The best part is that they parked it in the parking lot. Can you tell that I'm a city girl?
This is something that I love about our house. We live right across the street from this cornfield. It really grew while we were on vacation so it was beautiful when we got back. The picture is looking out to our street from right in front of our garage. We love our long driveway.

Enjoying a Little Bit More Summer

School has started here which is giving us the feeling that summer has ended and fall has begun. The weather being perfect has only added to that feeling. We went to the our favorite park in Norwalk on Friday to celebrate the beautiful weather and lack of bigger kids.This is one of Alyssa's favorite things to do when we go to the park. I think it is because Ashley loves it when Alyssa comes up really close to her face. Sorry there is no sound on our camera.

We wanted to sneak in one last swim at our public pool on Saturday evening and so we all put on our swimsuits and headed to the pool. We were disappointed to discover that it was closed for the season even though the website said it was still open. Our heartbroken Alyssa said "Let's go to the open one." We tried to find another pool that was open, but they were all closed. We managed to make Alyssa happy by filling up her little pool. We even let Ashley go for a short swim (or maybe splash is a better word to describe it).

Fun with Stuffed Animals

Alyssa has been really cute with her stuffed animals lately. Here are some pictures to explain.

I was mopping the floor one day and I came in the living room to find all of her animals sitting in the chairs from the kitchen.

She also lined them all up along the couch one day.
Here they are trying out Casey's special spot for when he is in the house.
Now they are actually spending some quality time with Casey.

She also had them lined up against the wall one day. And another day they were all sitting in a train like they were about to go down a slide together. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of either of these. I'm sure there are still many laughs to come over how we will find them arranged next.

Answer our poll

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The Des Moines Science Center

I took Alyssa to the Science Center this week because there was a dinosaur exhibit that I wanted her to see in order to prepare her for the "Walking With Dinosaurs" show that is coming the Danny's work in October. There is a ton of stuff to do there so we didn't spend too much time with the dinosaur stuff, but here were a few of the highlights. Here is Alyssa in front of the T-Rex Skull.

Here she is throwing sand on her friends that went with us. This sandbox had some puzzle pieces that go together to make dinosaur bone models.

This sandbox had bones in the ground that the kids could brush off as if they were part of a dinosaur dig. Alyssa got the brush in hand, but I don't think she knew what she was supposed to do with it.

This was probably her favorite part of the day. They had materials to make paper rockets and then there was a rocket launcher set up. I, of course, did this a few times throughout my schooling as a physics teaching major, so I made her a pretty cool rocket that flew all the way into the net about 50 feet away. Here she is putting the rocket on the launcher.

There is the rocket flying through the air. Okay, so you can't see it in the picture, but it is there somewhere in the distance.

There was one time when she put her rocket on the launcher and then another little boy came up and pushed the button that launches the rockets before she could. She flipped out and a took awhile to calm her down. She still talked about the "little boy pushing her button and making her cry" three days later.

Here she is playing with bubbles in the toddler zone of the science center.

For some reason she really likes this exhibit. I guess it is just because it involves rolling tennis balls and it is something that she can do all by herself.

Ashley sitting up

I guess a pretty noteworthy thing happened in the last couple of weeks that we should share with everyone. Ashley is now sitting up.

Two things came as a result of this. The first is that the girls can now take a bath together. They both love doing this. We still have to hold on to Ashley pretty tight as she is still very unsteady, but they do have fun together.

It took Ashley a few baths before she figured out how to get the toys in the water. This crocodile is the easiest toy for her to grab.

The second thing that resulted from Ashley learning how to sit up is that Alyssa is now much more interested in playing with Ashley. Sometimes I'll be in the other room for a few minutes and come back to find every toy in the room sitting in Ashley's lap. Alyssa is a very helpful big sister.

However, Alyssa does like rolling around on the floor with Ashley too. The two of them will roll across the whole room right next to each other. It is very cute. I tried to get a short video of them doing it, but by the time I thought of it last night, Ashley was tired and ready for bed.

Potty Training on Hold

Due to Alyssa being more interested in having this Kangaroo animal use the potty than herself, we are putting the potty training on hold for just a little while. We're going to try a new approach and hope that it goes better.

Potty Training

We don't have any pictures this week because we have been busy working on potty training Alyssa and she has been a little indecent most of the week. Today is day #4 and she has gone on the potty maybe 4 or 5 times. It took 2 days just to get her to figure out what we wanted her to do. Can you believe that this little girl didn't pee once for like a 7 hour stretch. She finally fell asleep on top of a thickly layered blanket on the floor and went in her sleep. She started to pee when she woke up so we rushed her up to the potty. She was so excited when she went and we immediately began clapping and cheering. We are using a bowl full of wrapped presents as incentive to use the potty and she was excited to finally get to choose one. She opened her first present and then quickly climbed back up on the potty and went again. Up to that point we hadn't had any accidents besides the wet blanket, but she has since. We have spent far to much time sitting in the bathroom without results and made far too many trips up and down the stairs. We wonder if it is worth all of the hastle to get her out of diapers. We would welcome any advice that anyone that has been through this process has to offer.

Back in Iowa

We had a busy week as we returned to Iowa and were getting settled again. We had a very nice vacation, but it is nice to be home and to develop normal sleeping habits again for our girls. I have also started the solids up again with Ashley. She would have nothing to do with them on vacation. Obviously, she needs some work on actually getting the food into her mouth. She insists on holding the spoon herself. I even use two spoons to feed her and it doesn't seem to do the trick.

Our little alien
Ashley had her 6 month check up this week (even though she is 6 1/2 months). She was 28 inches (97th percentile) long and nearly 20 pounds (90th percentile). The doctor said she looks very healthy.

Alyssa went to her first friends (siblings named Briel and Lewis) b-day party on Thursday. It was a Princess/Pirate theme so they got crowns and necklaces for the girls, and pirate hats and swords for the boys. Alyssa wouldn't keep the stuff on long enough to take a picture, but I did get a picture of her playing on the slip and slide. She loved it.

I also got her while she was eating cake baked in ice cream cones with ice cream on top.
Here are her princess clothes that she put on at home in preparation for the party.
She loves to sit in Ashley's Bumbo.
On Friday I took her to the Mall to play since Daddy was working a long day and it was way too hot to do anything outside.
This was the new thing she mastered this time. She can now climb up into that boat looking toy. At first when she did it, you would see her legs up in the air as she went face first over the little wall. After doing it a few times, she learned to climb over with her legs first. Ashley slept while Alyssa played.